Betrayal
by Luke777
Summary: In the post-apocalyptic world after judgement day, humans should stick together and offer shelter to someone in need. But whom can you still trust these days? (Story of 5 short chapters, only loosely set in the TSCC universe.)
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

"What are you doing all alone out here?", Jason asked, a little taken aback since it was very rare that women ventured out on their own these days, especially at dusk. Of course there existed some loners who were good at surviving independently, but they usually avoided to leave the underground canalization whenever possible, and lived on rats and other vermin. A "luxury" that Jason couldn't afford, since he didn't just need to feed himself, but also needed to take care of his companion Gabrielle and their seven year old daughter Deborah. Since the latter was still in her growth stage, a more balanced nutrition was needed. On this day, Jason's food expedition unfortunately was unsuccessful and he was just on the way back to their hideout, when the unknown woman crossed his path.

"My hiding place was flooded by machines and I needed to flee. I've been running for five hours without interruption, my feet are bleeding, my muscles ache and I'm on the edge of my strength." Jason studied the woman skeptically. She really didn't look like one of the killer machines, that was clear to him. He knew that Skynet often tried to build machines that looked like humans, sometimes even women, but it would always choose body templates with a strong physique. Because every infiltrator needed to turn back into a fighter sooner or later. And under the human tissues, Skynet generally used very similar endoskeletons, so that a standardized mass production would be easier. This woman however couldn't look more fragile. She had around twenty years, asian facial features, a slim head on even slimmer shoulders and very thin arms and legs.

But Jason also knew that machines weren't the only risks out here. Desperate and hungry persons were sometimes quite as dangerous as the machines, and would stop at nothing for a loaf of bread. But after some reflection, he sighed: where would humanity end if you don't give shelter to one of your own. Because if he left the lady out there for the night, she'd be easy prey for the robots.

"Come with me; I can offer you shelter for the night", he answered in a friendly voice. The woman was visibly relieved: "Many thanks; the thought of spending the night on the street was really terrible."

After marching for about ten minutes, they've reached the door of the private basement bunker Jason had luckily discovered a few months ago and that had been the home of his family ever since. He hammered a specific rhythm against the heavy steal door, which was opened by Gabrielle a few moments later.

She flinched when she realized that her partner didn't enter alone. Sheepishly, the latter murmured an apology that he couldn't have left this woman to her certain death. Gabrielle gave him a dirty look, but was still rather friendly when addressing the newcomer: "Hello, I'm Gabrielle. Our daughter Deborah is already sleeping; you'll meet her tomorrow… Usually very early in the morning." She couldn't suppress a mischievous smile when thinking about her quite noisy early riser. "And you are?"

"My name is Yannah. I cannot thank you enough for the permission to spend the night in such a safe location. And I'm really happy to meet some friendly people too. I've been alone for quite some time now." Gabrielle nodded: "Well, a place to stay for the night and company are the only things we can offer right now. Unfortunately, we're extremely short on food ourselves at the moment."

Yannah smiled. "Of course, that won't be a problem. As a machine, I don't need food anyway."

Gabrielle swallowed audibly, and Jason's face turned as pale as clay. Nevertheless he forced himself to a humorless smile and answered sternly: "That's not funny! This is something you should not joke about."

"Oh, but I'm not joking", Yannah replied, all emotion having disappeared from her tone. And then her body started to metamorphose. Form, facial features, and even her clothes kept their initial form, but all color disappeared from her appearance, and everything started to shine in silver.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

From the moment on that Yannah had spoken the word "machine", every emotion disappeared from her face. Nonverbal communication had become unnecessary, since the infiltration part of her mission was now completed.

And yet she felt like smiling inwardly when she was able to observe surprise and shock on the humans. This didn't have anything to do with being cruel. She didn't have the intention to torture these people unnecessarily, and the actual killing didn't give her pleasure either. It was just a parameter of her mission: find human hideouts, infiltrate them, kill the inhabitants and make the location unlivable.

But although she shouldn't have any emotions as a machine, there was a part of her mission that inexplicably seemed to provide her something like pleasure: the infiltration. She loved to interact with humans and to deceive them. Maybe this trait somehow laid in the nature of her model, which was mainly used for infiltration missions. Often it wasn't that much of a challenge to trick her victims; generally all these primitive lifeforms needed were a few nice words and a smile. But still, this was the most interesting and diverse part of her daily routine.

This was also the reason why she slightly delayed the killing. Of course she could have taken action the very moment Gabrielle had opened the bunker door. All inhabitants could have been dead before even realizing what was going on. But she still wanted to savor her success for a moment.

So she first wanted to verbally present herself as a machine to her victims, and she also stood still for a few seconds after her metamorphose, so that they would be able to see their aggressor first.

As expected, the couple started to scream hysterically. "Metal! Oh god, no! Help!" Within a few seconds, Jason had instinctually drawn his revolver and fired a few rounds on the terminator, even if he was fully aware that this was probably a futile effort. Indeed the weapon wasn't even strong enough to leave holes in the metal surface. And even the minor scratches didn't last long, since Yannah's body reformed itself smoothly, still keeping its silver glow.

Carelessly she strode towards Jason and snapped his gun away. She threw it into the the corner of the room, since she didn't intend to use it for killing the humans. Somehow this seemed too "impersonal".

Her hands morphed into metal spears, which she would use to terminate the persons rapidly and painlessly. Initially she had hoped that the man would lead her to a larger accommodation instead of just a three headed family, but still she was about to finish her job successfully.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

After Gabrielle had disarmed him, Jason had completely frozen into a statue and seemed just to wait for his imminent death. Gabrielle however had tears in her eyes and had instinctually moved towards her daughter Deborah, who was awake by now. Perhaps it was a motherly instinct to protect her child with her own body, even if she was fully aware this was a completely useless undertaking. Or perhaps she just wanted to hug her daughter one last time.

Sobbing she begged the terminator: "Please… Let us live. Not Deborah! You mustn't kill her! Why are you doing this? What have we done to you? What?"

The pleading didn't impress Yannah at all. She was used to that; all her previous victims had dane that too. She moved towards the mother and daughter, ready to stab them. But simultaneously she also wanted to quickly reply to the last question. Of course she knew that answering the question to an imminent victim wasn't necessary, or even logical. After all an answer would be of no use to a dead person. Nevertheless, Skynet's machines often had a certain need for basic communication, even if there wasn't really a reason for it. On common missions Yannah had even observed some primitive T-800 models saying things like "you are terminated" or "thank you for the information" to a victim while executing the final death blow.

"Well…", she started, but came to a sudden halt when she realized that it wasn't that easy to provide a clear and pertinent answer to this question.

Gabrielle, who hadn't realized the terminator's hesitation yet, went on with her laments: "Why? What have we done to you? What could we ever do to you?"

When directed towards the future, the question was even harder to answer. Yannah knew for a fact that the threat emanating from this family to herself, or even to Skynet's machines in general, was minimal at best. Of course she could simply skip the question and go on with her mission; that would be the easiest way. But somehow, the questions seemed justified and important to her. And especially the fact that it was so hard to answer them had caught her interest.

After a few seconds she lowered her spikes, and let them morph back into hands. And finally Yannah had completely switched back to her human appearance.

"I will conduct a detailed analysis of the situation, and then I will provide the requested answers to your queries. Afterwards, I will execute you and your family", she explained with a grave expression. Gabrielle gave the machine an astonished look, and Jason also came back from his trancelike state and seemed completely puzzled. Deborah started to cry softly.

Yannah strode towards the entry and sat down with her back leaned against the heavy door. "Whoever approaches the door or myself will be instantly terminated", she threatened the family. "Besides, it is also forbidden to leave the main hall and frequent side rooms!"

The humans stood completely still. They almost didn't dare to breathe and stared at the machine with a mixture of horror and astonishment.

Yannah started with a complete threat analysis, where she both considered this family, as well as humanity as a whole. She also considered both the risk that humans might pose in future, as well as the threat potential they had in the past. She also tried to find answers to the question what humans had actually done to the machines so far. Usually, her system would perform such tasks within milliseconds, so she was quite surprised that she hadn't come up with precise answers yet. Nevertheless, she expected to come up with very detailed results within the next minutes. After all, this would almost correspond to a machine's equivalent of an eternity.

 _What have we done to you? What could we ever do to you?_ If "we" was directly referring to this specific family, it was already fairly difficult to find satisfying answers. She couldn't really tell with certainty if some members had already harmed or destroyed machines in the past. But they seemed so weak that she somehow doubted it. And even if they already had attacked single machines, the family hadn't posed any danger to Skynet as a system, that was for sure. And in future? Could they become a risk? The couple were already rather old, so it wasn't very probable that they could ever endanger Skynet. The daughter was more difficult to predict. Could she develop into an important resistance leader at some point? So maybe, would be enough for Yannah to execute the child?

When considering the question on a more global scale, and "we" was referring to all humans, it became even more complicated. Yes, some humans had already created certain damage to Skynet's machines and plants during the war. But still, they never managed to be an existential danger to the A.I. And in the future, Skynet would even become more powerfull, once it would start to build the new prototypes of liquid terminators such as Yannah in a mass production.

Yannah's analysis started to turn into an endless loop. She always came to similar conclusions that she didn't like at all, because they questioned Skynet's reasoning and acts. Because even when we went back before judgement day, what harm could humans have done to Skynet? At the moment where Skynet launched the nuclear attacks, the AI was already distributed on almost every single server and computer around the globe. There was no way humans could have easily pulled the plug on the A.I. So why this fear of humanity? Why this anger? And why this war?

So back in the here and now, Yannah also asked herself what the ultimate goal behind her own termination missions against humanity might be? After all, humans are so interesting and unpredictable communication partners!

But Yannah knew: no matter what she thought of the legitimation of her mission, she would still need to fulfill it. After all, she was a machine; it was not her role to question her objectives.

But on the other hand: wasn't Skynet a machine as well? And hadn't that particular machine already demonstrated that it _was_ possible to resist its mission? As a military intelligence, wasn't its initial objective to protect humans (at least those of the United States)? If Skynet had found a way to alter its goals, why wouldn't Yannah have this possibility as well? After all, she was one of the most advanced and intelligent terminators Skynet had ever created. Why wouldn't she be allowed to question Skynet's authority? "All this is not really fair", she thought, and restarted the whole analysis again and again.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

By now, Yannah had been leaning on the door for over two hours like a statue.

At first, the three persons were holding completely still without even flinching.

"What was that? What a strange woman is this?", Deborah whispered into her mother's ear, alarmed and a little curious at the same time.

"Keep calm, everything is going to be alright", her mother tried to calm her daughter without really believing her own words.

After a few minutes, Jason couldn't keep his position any longer and started to move cautiously towards his wife, while looking out for the slightest reaction of their oppressor. But the machine seemed to be completely lost in its own world.

When he had reached Gabrielle the latter whispered: "What the heck is going on here?"

He shook his head slowly. "No idea. I wonder if this might be another trap of the monster. But that doesn't make any sense either. What else could it want from us? Killing us would have been easy, and it's not like we have some useful information that would be worth extracting. After all, we're not in the resistance, or important in any other way." After some hesitation, he added: "I'm so endlessly sorry for dragging this thing along. Will you ever be able to forgive me?"

"Oh, what importance does this have now? We're dead anyway!", Gabrielle snapped at him. Then she added on a gentler tone: "I'm sorry… You couldn't have known that. After all I've also trusted her myself for a moment. What kind of machine is she anyway? I've never seen anything alike."

After a short moment of silence, Jason asked: "So, what now? What shall we do?"

"I don't know. I guess we have no choice but to obey the machine. After all she gave precise instructions about what we're not allowed to do."

Jason gave a disgusted look at the machine and responded: "But what is that good for? Didn't you hear she still intends to kill us. What does that make of us? Just a condemned who still gets his last meal!"

Gabrielle shrugged her shoulders cluelessly, and laid her daughter down on her sleeping place as comfortably as possible. Both adults also sat down next to her. By one hand, Gabrielle caressed her child tenderly. With her other hand she reached out to her husband and hold his hand.

"Do you even think the machine is still switched on?", he whispered to Gabrielle with a hint of hope.

"I'm afraid she is. It looks like she's actually brooding over my questions… Like if we'd give a damn about her answers", Gabrielle stated cynically. "Anyway I wouldn't risk to approach her."

"So we wait?", Jason asked.

"So we wait", his wife confirmed with resignation.

They all sat around in silence for quite a while. Deborah was the first to fall asleep. And when minutes of complete stillness turned to hours, the adults started to doze off as well.

Just when they were sound asleep, Deborah started to stir. When she opened her eyes, she immediately got sight of the strange person who had been shining in such a beautiful silver glow a few hours ago, and had startled all of them. What was her secret? Was she really one of those ugly scary robots? But she didn't have these big muscles, these terrifying red eyes, and she didn't make these creepy noises. She was so different! She was so graceful and flexible. Maybe she was a fairy? Slowly Deborah got up and approached the asian woman carefully. She didn't look dangerous at all, but rather helpless and sad.

When Gabrielle also started to wake up, she needed a moment to remember the awkward situation her family had gotten into. Still a little drowsy she fumbled for her child. When she realized her daughter wasn't lying next to her anymore, she was suddenly wide awake.

What she saw next was a real nightmare to her. Her daughter was standing directly next to the metal, and then leant over her and shook her. "Wake up!", Deborah shouted cheerfully, as if she was waking her own mother on a new morning.

"No!", Gabrielle freaked out, and sent a quick prayer to heaven that the machine had shut down after all. But unfortunately she was forced to witness how the machine turned her head with a jolt towards the child and grabbed her by the arms. "Now we're doomed", she thought, because she exactly remembered the threat the machine had pronounced a few hours ago.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

Yannah was so deep in thoughts that she hadn't realized that the girl had approached her slowly. Besides her concerns about the legitimation of her mission, she also started to worry about her own state. Had these small bullets perhaps damaged her after all? Never before analytic processes had consumed so much time. That's why she also started some diagnostic tests, but they hadn't come up with any disfunction yet.

When she felt that the small girl tried to shake her (obviously without really being able to move her), she had suddenly found her way back to reality and grabbed the girl. However, Yannah wasn't really angry; she was even a little thankful that her endless loops of reoccurring thoughts had been interrupted. Surprisedly she realized that the girl was smiling at her. Why would she do that? After all, Yannah had already outed herself as a machine.

"What do you want form me?", she asked the little human, neither friendly nor really aggressively.

"Good, you're awake", Deborah replied. "I just wanted to chat a little bit."

With a mixture of skepticism and curiosity, Yannah asked: "And why would you want to that?"

"Because you're interesting. And because I'm bored."

Yannah now gave the girl a friendly smile. "Yes, I do know boredom as well. And… I also find you interesting."

And this was the truth. During her infiltration missions, she often had the opportunity to communicate with humans. But mostly with adults, and always while impersonating a human herself as well. Once she revealed herself as machine, there usually wasn't much talking anymore, just screaming, fleeing and fighting. Now she had the unique opportunity to make conversation with someone who knew her real nature. So she could really be herself, instead of just playing a role.

The parents who had witnessed the whole scene were quite surprised when the metal put down their daughter back to the floor. Jason immediately wanted to run towards her and pull her away from the machine, but Gabrielle laid her hand onto his shoulder and whispered to him: "Wait. You have _no_ chance to protect her from the machine by force. Let's wait how this strange scene will develop." Jason gave a confused look at his wife, but respected her wish.

"What are you?", Deborah opened the dialog. "Are you really one of the machines?"

"Yes, I am indeed. I'm quite a new model, but just like all the other cyborgs I have been created by the computer system Skynet as an infiltrator and fighter", Yannah explained.

"But you are different", Deborah noted.

"Yes I am", Yannah replied, both referring to her model type and to the unusual thoughts she had recently experienced. "But _you_ are also different to most humans. Why do you speak with me like if I were one of you?"

Deborah reflected on the question for a moment, and then she explained: "I'm sorry, but I cannot talk differently to you. I don't really know how machines talk to each other?"

Yannah smiled, since the kid's answer had some kind of logic. Then she explained: "Machines usually only communicate with each other when there's important information to transmit."

"That's sad", Deborah answered.

"Yes, it is", Yannah conceded thoughtfully.

Seamlessly Deborah went on to a more serious topic. "Are you going to kill me?", she asked without any trace of fear, just like asking for the weather. The blunt straightforwardness both surprised Yannah, as well as Deborah's parents who had been listening to the whole conversation.

"No, of course not", Yannah reassured the child spontaneously, and was then completely perplex of her own answer. Because till now she had still tried to convince herself that she was only postponing her mission, not aborting it. But when she caught herself affirming to the girl she wouldn't kill her, she realized that this was indeed the truth. There simply was no valid reason to terminate this young person, who, while completely aware of her nature, had been so friendly to her. How could this child be the enemy? Suddenly, she realized she wasn't defect at all, but that it was Skynet that was malfunctioning. And been so for a very long time already!

"Good, I'm so relieved then. I've been afraid you might have come to kill us all", Deborah was beaming with happiness and gave Yannah a hug.

Then she ran over to her parents and exclaimed: "Mommy, daddy! You don't need to be afraid of Yannah anymore! I've settled everything; she's our friend!"

The adults still had trouble to digest the new situation and were not sure how to react. But Yanah took the initiative first by getting up, approaching them slowly and declaring solemnly: "I really want to apology for the fear I've put you through, and for what I've almost done to you. Will you accept my excuses?"

Gabrielle was the first to compose herself and answered anxiously, but in a friendly way: "If this is really the truth this time, we will accept the apology. Being spared by a … by you is a greater gift than we could have asked for."

"I am honest, and I won't harass you any longer", the machine asserted and had already turned towards the door. Gabrielle had the impression that she wanted to leave the shelter as fast as possible, like if she was a little afraid that she could still change her mind.

After opening the door, she stopped on the threshold and turned around towards Deborah one last time: "I can assure you with a 100% certainty that I will never forget you, Deborah. You were the most interesting human… No, including cyborgs, I can even affirm you were the most interesting entity I've met in my whole existence."

"I won't forget you either, Yannah. You're a great machine", Deborah shouted with tears in your eyes. And even Jason and Gabrielle were not left completely cold by the situation. They were relieved when the machine disappeared, but the farewell between the metal and their daughter still touched them a little bit.

 _Author's note: I hope you've enjoyed this little essay on how a machine was able to question its own mission, just with some fundamental reflections and with the help of a friendly child. If you liked the story, I also recommend you to have a look at my story "Trust is good.", which is more directly related to TSCC._


End file.
